In 1838, a young Abraham Lincoln gave a speech about the perpetuation of America’s political institutions.
He said that “… all the armies in the World could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio River, or make a track on the Blue Ridge trail, if it took them a thousand years.” He said that the real danger to American democracy which was real, would not come from abroad but rather that “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Is there any interested American today who doesn’t feel like something is terribly wrong within our country…that people no longer get along, or seem to care about each other or believe in similar things, or work together to make things better day by day. It seems to take a community disaster from something like weather or fire or a major accident to get people to work together to help each other.
There is something like a national chorus singing a form of blues about why Americans no longer believe in each other acting as if it is simply too much trouble to even care.
After generations of living night and day in their phones, designed purposely to be addictive to an Instagram or Tik Tok, Americans no longer even see or understand problems that exist and so are unable to work together to solve them.
There is universal agreement on some things. The American attitude towards politicians remains at the low point it reached years ago: politicians are no better than used car salesmen.
As we approach another political event – the mid-term elections – campaign commercials fill our airwaves. It is a Senate-Congressional election year and so our mailboxes contain political literature daily and the phones are ringing for campaign contributions.
But something is different this year. Take a close listen to campaign commercials and you hear claims that those in office are corrupt because they take advantage of insider information to buy and sell stocks and get rich.
Take a real look at those TV commercials and you will see that the fine print underneath the political rhetoric rarely contains the name of a political party. It is as if these newly-on the-scene candidates – many women who have served in the military – would rather skip the political ID altogether…and say so.
And that is because – most simply – the national political parties have become little more than another reflection of an America that may no longer exist. Yes there is the blue for Democrats and red for Republicans…and the elephant and the donkey…but those have become road signs that lead nowhere.
Once liberals were liberal and conservatives were conservative. The liberals belonged to the Democratic Party and the conservatives to the Republican Party. That simplicity no longer exists. It began to disappear in the 1980s under Ronald Reagan’s influence as the Republicans became more and more right wing and a number of them stepped away from that orthodoxy into a more liberal approach to our governmental needs.
The Liberal Party is a New York political party. Our focus remains on New York even as we see America as a whole and recognize how a nation’s values impact its greatest city. And yet, after assisting a more congenial New York Democratic Party to get rid of the crooked values of Tammany Hall, it began to support liberal Republicans in New York who had stepped away from their party.
What has changed has wrecked havoc with traditional values and approaches as today liberals have conservative views and conservatives have liberal views and by so doing the traditional idea of Democrats and Republicans has changed making those parties irrelevant.
The result is obvious: our national political parties are gone, have no meaning, stand for nothing, no longer represent a national will.
The “official” Republican Party has been overwhelmed by MAGA-the force behind Donald Trump’s virulent approach to governing America as an autocratic CEO – neither knowing nor caring about government in a way that has bludgeoned the governmental actions of the Executive branch.
The outvoted Democratic Party seems to have lost its values, ideas and constituents and is led by an old man and a weak one.
DISSOLUTION
It has had its successes and failures. Its very existence and early successes inspired the formation of the Republican -based Conservative Party, had an impact on the shadowy Green Party, and eventually led to the formation of the Working Families Party-organized by a disenchanted Democratic Mayor David Dinkins and an unaffiliated community union to replace the Liberal Party as a mediating force in New York State politics.
The two national parties had long ago worked together to place a restriction on these newly developed “third or minor” parties. In order to remain permanently on the ballot, each party had to receive 50,000 votes on its own ballot line in every Gubernatorial campaign. If a political party failed to achieve that number it had to petition a certain number of citizens each election year to win a place on the ballot…election by election until the next Gubernatorial election.
That number remained untouchable until Andrew Cuomo, then Governor, tired of being challenged by the Working Families candidates against him, got a private committee to recommend that minor parties receive 150,000 votes in each Gubernatorial and each Presidential campaign.
Nothing has been done to get Governor Kathy Hochul to make a significant change in that arrangement.
And so, long-standing parties have quietly slid to the sidelines with only their names and reputations left to mark their very existence and historical influence.
Donald Trump’s MAGA and America First has further pushed the former liberal focus of thirty years of the FDR Presidency into history. Given our failure to teach history in our schools those years have all but disappeared.
Democratic Presidents have not made much of a difference. Republicans were strong enough to all but shut Barack Obama out of existence but for his attempt to improve our healthcare coverage. Southerners like Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton left little in the way of a liberal approach to anything. JFK was cut short and Lyndon Johnson tried to bring an FDR approach back but got caught up in trying to deal with the Vietnam War abroad and the growing demand for equal rights for all at home.
But all of this is politics and today Americans seem to ignore the actual political situations and focus on whether any of these politicians give a damn about them.
LIVING IN OUR PHONES
Actually, that’s not quite true. There is a focus but it is solidly planted on the reality that Americans have been living in their phones for the past 50 years and it has a taken a toll.
The education of our children essentially stopped in 1970 and has spiraled downward into failure–and no one seems to care. Cities and communities with strong teacher unions are doing the worst job of all.
Our ability to provide healthcare has been so severely diminished that we are 27th in the World…and no one seems to care.
Our young people don’t read newspapers or magazines, don’t listen to cable news or even national news programs. Only Instagram. They do not know what they do not know. And no one seems to care.
But one entity does care.
The Heritage Foundation introduced Mr. Trump to the idea that he can be like his favorite World leaders-the Russian, North Korean and Chinese strongmen – who do not seek assistance from their so-called elected representatives. Trump has had no problem acting accordingly.
The Foundation supplied him with more than 100 direct orders which ignore the existence of a Senate or a House of Representatives. Both controlled by the Republican Party, the Congress and Senate “sleep” while Trump simply issues orders and then vigorously takes on the impact of American approval or disapproval. If he doesn’t like results he insults them. If he likes results he praises them. If he doesn’t like the truth, he makes his own truth.
And that CEO attitude has captured the more than 11 million voters who sent him back to the White House a second time because they no longer believe in the government we have. And that essential disbelief is nationwide and ignores the various missteps, self-concern, high prices and strangeness of weekend self-promotional blasts on his Truth Social.
One thing that is difficult for even the most educated Americans to understand – and that means those middle and old aged people among us – is that America is not one big organization guided by the same principles, understanding and concerns – but a pastiche of 50 States with all kinds of differences that one can see clearly only by living in them – not just visiting them.
America is a nation with a significant racist attitude which has bent a bit but remains virulent.
America is a nation proud of the opportunity it provides that no other nation in history has ever provided: the opportunity to make money. Money then has become our singular value.
Immigrants have long come to America to fill vacancies that have always existed in our national economy. It works both ways – they help the nation continue to produce and can earn a lifetime totally unavailable in the World they have left.
And yet as those immigrants now come with color there is a resentment that has never existed in America before. It is believed that in just another 30 or so years, the majority of Americans will no longer be white.
Anyone who does not see the vigorous opposition to this fact as a driving force in attitudes and actions, is purposely blind.
The ferocity of these feelings is deeply responsible for the American angst today.
It is one thing to be uneducated. It is another to hate.
We are only a nation which has existed for 250 years. Looking at Europe, Asia and Africa, we are still a youngster finding our way.
But the behavior of children can be virulent, ferocious and self – destructive.
That is where we are today. Our democracy challenged by a government no longer acting as a democracy.
Beliefs driven by money and resentment.
Looking everywhere for leadership that suddenly seems to be missing.
The wannabes seeking to lead are awash in significant, visible weaknesses.
The nation stumbling – knowing full well that if the upcoming election puts an end to our present form of government – madness well may follow for the next two years.
The truth can be difficult to find but find it we must.
We cannot control climate change. We are now faced with an inability to control the very brilliant technology we have developed. We cannot seem to end a war we started.
But we have overcome worse.
We won two world wars at once.
We controlled the fury and fear of atomic destruction.
We are the only people who have even come close to defeating us.
If we are that good, we are good enough to find truth and reason again and by so doing, ourselves.